Yes, I realize that the last word isn’t the correct one, but as a mom with two small kiddos, the right word isn’t allowed in our vocabulary. Speaking of children, maybe if we marketers targeted our audience as children, we might see better results!

In a world where consumers continue to become even more savvy & sophisticated, it’s easy to think that our digital marketing message needs to do the same. While it’s true that consumers are armed with knowledge, it’s also true that we’re all busy and most of us lack focus. This undiagnosed ADD supports my sentiment – keep it simple.

A few places this comes into play in the online world include:

Search Engine Optimization

Obviously clients know the most about their industry and products/services. So when asked what keywords they want to focus on they tend to choose technical & specific names. Depending on your target audience, it’s important to remember that the general public will conduct a more generic search. For example if you sell proximity sensors, research shows that a very low number of people search for that term and it would be more valuable to optimize with a more commonly used term like motion sensors.

Landing Pages

After performing a multitude of A/B tests over the years, we’ve found that the more simplified the landing page, the higher the conversion rates. To take it a step further, it’s important to remember that the smallest things can make a difference.

What does the headline say? What colors and imagery are you using? An interesting fact to share – when using photos of people, eye contact’s not always best. Try to select images where the person is looking in the direction of your call to action.

Web Design

The home page of a website is considered prime real estate and we design it to make the most of it. That being said, cramming in too much information looks disorganized and confuses the consumer. Effective UX Design should ensure all important elements have been included, but laid out in a manner that makes it clear on where the consumer should up get from there.

Don’t get me wrong, marketing on the web is by no means simple, but the marketing message, no matter the medium can be.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/digital-marketing-101/feed/03184Conversion: Lead Generation to Purchasing Customerhttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/#respondWed, 01 Jul 2015 13:29:24 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3157As a Business owner, you know business strategies don’t always work well if they come in the “one size fits all” variety, especially when it comes to lead generation and conversion. How would you have a competitive advantage? When it comes to digital marketing there are a lot of options and opportunities for creating a... Read more »

]]>As a Business owner, you know business strategies don’t always work well if they come in the “one size fits all” variety, especially when it comes to lead generation and conversion. How would you have a competitive advantage? When it comes to digital marketing there are a lot of options and opportunities for creating a strong business practice online.

Lead Generation:

This would be something that tells new people about who you are or it could tell existing clients about a new product/service that they don’t currently utilize. Your “lead generator” could search engine marketing such as Google AdWords, Bing or Yahoo network advertising, banner ads, contextual ads, video ads or Facebook ads.

You could be getting lead generation from your sales staff, an onsite data collection, referral sources and Broadcast Radio. While determining your best generation option, there are questions you can ask to be sure it will be successful: Is your lead generator targeted? Will it have a high return based on the strategy and specific product/service you’re promoting? Will you get quality leads based on your strategy?

Lead Collection:

When you are generating leads, where does the potential client/customer go on your website and what are you asking them to do? Are they going to fill out a form? Online forms make it easy for you, but does it make it easy for your potential client? Better yet, if you make it easy for your potential client, are you still gathering the best information to convert that lead into a sale? The “call-to-action” on your site might be great, but if the collector is too complicated the user experience could be ruined and the conversion won’t happen.

Lead Conversion:

Let’s convert those leads to sales dollars! I don’t mean to confuse you here. A lot of times we talk about conversion online as completing a goal. For example we might consider someone filling out your online form to be a conversion. I want to take that a step further and think about it in terms of sales. If you have truly converted a lead outside of digital marketing, they have decided on you and bought your product or service. If you have an e-commerce site and individuals can buy your product/service online, the components discussed above apply to you differently. But for someone still looking to utilize their standard business model and sell offline, this is something to really think about. Whoever follows up with your online leads is vital! If you are doing a good job of sending qualified leads to your lead collector, this next phase of lead conversion could mean big dollars. Have you thought about creating a standard process for follow up? Even a little discussion and training for the individuals who will be following up with you leads could do wonders!

What are your ideas on digital conversions? Do you have a call-to-action idea you need help fleshing out?

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/feed/031576 Tips for Blogging Effectivelyhttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/05/blogging-effectively/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/05/blogging-effectively/#respondTue, 19 May 2015 15:08:42 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3101Sometimes a tweet, picture, or Facebook post is not enough. We need more; your audience wants more. This is when blogging comes in to save the day. With blogs you have an abundance of space, the ability to share photos and videos, and unlimited creativity. Blogs are utilized for many different purposes: corporate blogs, personal... Read more »

]]>Sometimes a tweet, picture, or Facebook post is not enough. We need more; your audience wants more. This is when blogging comes in to save the day. With blogs you have an abundance of space, the ability to share photos and videos, and unlimited creativity. Blogs are utilized for many different purposes: corporate blogs, personal blogs, hobby/interest blogs, professional blogs, and community blogs. Within these various categories, there are a myriad of sub categories to reach every possible niche. Because there is a blog for just about everything, it is crucial to take the time to make your blog stand out and place immense focus on your brand. You don’t want to just blog, you want to effectively blog!

Effective Blogging Strategies

Authority: Don’t simply add content to your blog and blogging niche, make an impact and add something new and influential. Have that authority and power when writing your blog to really lay down the gavel and make a point.

Content: Along with having new and powerful content, make sure it is creative! Benefit from the ability to share more than 140 characters. While you have lots of space, make sure that you don’t bore your readers with too much information. Pick topics that your readers will be drawn to read to increase your engagement. While thinking creatively, also think like your readers to gain a better understanding of what they want to read. You can also browse what your competitors are blogging about to make sure your ideas are unique.

Timing: They say that timing is everything, and while this isn’t necessarily the case for blogging, it certainly is important. Take the time to research when it is the best time to reach your audience. Look at days and specific times that your audience is most active on Social Media and Blogs.

Style: Blogging allows you to share your voice with your audience on a digital platform. Don’t let the written words stop you from showing them what your brand is all about. Choose an appropriate yet creative way to stylize your brand that fits with how you want to be seen. This can additionally be shown through the design and extra elements on your blog page.

Frequency: It is completely understandable that you may not be able to blog daily, or even weekly, but pick a range and stick with it. You don’t want your audience to look at your blog and see 5 posts from 3 months ago and nothing sense. Make sure you are consistent with when and how you post to create more loyalty and interest in your blog.

Engagement: This is a key turning point in your blog, it takes your posts and begins to create a community. This is done through interaction on your blog in the form of comments. When your audience sees comments, they are more likely to post comments which creates great dialogue. While you want comments, keep an eye out for trolls and spam comments, you want to monitor to your comments to make sure they are related to your blog. Once you have your comments, make sure that you reply and respond to them to continue the engagement cycle.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/05/blogging-effectively/feed/03101Reporting and Understanding Datahttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/#respondWed, 08 Apr 2015 13:44:41 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3058Every Easter, my parents host an egg hunt. My little cousins can barely wait to finish dinner; they get so excited for it. My dad hides the plastic eggs early in the morning and counts them as he puts them out. 96 this year. When they are collected, the kids empty the treasures and recount... Read more »

]]>Every Easter, my parents host an egg hunt. My little cousins can barely wait to finish dinner; they get so excited for it. My dad hides the plastic eggs early in the morning and counts them as he puts them out. 96 this year. When they are collected, the kids empty the treasures and recount the eggs to see how many are left on the acreage. They are rarely all found. This year, the cousins found 90 eggs. My dad then takes a few chosen kids out to the yard and points out the missing findings. As the expert who understands the terrain best, he finds the missing eggs with no problem.

Do you find yourself hunting?

Understanding data from your online marketing efforts should not be like an Easter egg hunt. You might not understand key performance indicators or terms like CTR, reach, impressions, html, H2s or bounce rate and we don’t expect you to. We can walk you through a relevant report you got from a previous vendor or explain something we reported to you with a few more down to earth terms. It’s exciting to have so much data from online marketing efforts, but it’s even more exciting when you can understand the valuable information from the report. It’s our job to point that information out to you and explain what it means.

What do we report on?

Monthly and quarterly, we report on a variety of data based on the goals we have created with you. We pick out key points and highlight those along with our reports so you don’t have to do the searching through the data. It’s our intention to translate our reporting into meaningful marketing minded statements that simply summarize our findings or easily articulate a needed action.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/feed/03058A Contagious Laugh: Marketing That Sucks You Inhttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/03/content-marketing/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/03/content-marketing/#respondMon, 09 Mar 2015 13:27:53 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3013Contagious: When you get dragged along Inclusion: When you are in on it My grandma is the oldest of 10 children. A hard working Wisconsin Farm family. When I was younger we used to get together with them more frequently. Family reunions were easier when not as many grand-kids and cousins were married, had kids... Read more »

My grandma is the oldest of 10 children. A hard working Wisconsin Farm family. When I was younger we used to get together with them more frequently. Family reunions were easier when not as many grand-kids and cousins were married, had kids or lived a distance away. It was always a fun atmosphere for a couple reasons. Not only were smiles contagious, laughs were too. Once one of them let out a cackle…all ten of them got going…Grandma Joanie, Mary and Judy all sound the same …Jim, John, Jerry and Janet all added their special touch, Carol had the soft giggle, Joe would just turn red with a grin and Sally overpowered them all with her yelling laugh. It wasn’t long before you yourself were laughing and you had no idea what they were talking about!

You don’t have to understand something for it to have an impact on you.

But if it catches your attention, you might want to know more. Most of the time my great aunts and uncles were just reminiscing and once you found out what it was they were laughing at, it wasn’t funny to you anyways…but if they laughed…it sure became funny.

You could say this is like a certain striped dress picture. You may have looked at it and seen one thing, but that wasn’t what you were supposed to see. Or you looked at it only to see which side you were on. White & Gold vs. Blue & Black was all the debate. Did people care about the dress, or even why there were seeing the different colors that they saw? Not really…They just wanted to know what all the buzz was about and be included in it. Regardless, people sure saw that dress a lot this week…and will probably remember it, when people refer to it, for quite some time.

What are some ways to capture attention?

Remember something, tell people something for the first time, let people talk about you, explain something, show something unique, question something ordinary, or the hardest of them all shock and awe.

In marketing you can look at it four ways.

You can capture attention and entertain, capture attention and create buzz, capture attention and include or you can capture attention and be relevant. Any of the four work. Sometimes attention grabbing things can have multiple of these outcomes. It’s worth considering what might happen or what you want to have happen with your attention grabbing idea/content. These things can happen naturally or you can try to plan them out. The trick is to find that thing that will be contagious in a very good way. Let yourself be creative in your efforts and you could have a bandwagon effect.